


In The Dark (You Find Me)

by gansey_is_our_king



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Has No Chill, Adam Parrish Loves Ronan Lynch, Boys Kissing, Canon Compliant, Fluff, I Don't Even Know, I think?, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, Is there plot?, M/M, No CDTH spoilers, Ronan Lynch is a Good Boyfriend, kind of?, what a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 14:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19402318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gansey_is_our_king/pseuds/gansey_is_our_king
Summary: “Parrish?"Ronan sounds hoarse and rough with sleep when he finally picks up the call.But he picked up the call.“How did you know it was me?” Adam whispers.-Adam and Ronan spend some time together late a night. Just a few quick, cute scenes.





	In The Dark (You Find Me)

**Author's Note:**

> Just trying to get all these fics done before Call Down The Hawk drops and my head canons are disproved...

**I**

There are bite marks on his already battered watch strap, like braille, like that small white scar on his wrist where Adam picked a scab one too many times. He sits at his shitty desk in his shitty apartment above the church, rubbing his thumb absently across the fake leather strap again and again, not really looking at anything, wishing that he could just switch his brain off. 

The watch still works.

The hands keep on ticking, ticking, ticking behind the scuffed face.

Is it really just two in the morning?

Adam tiptoes downstairs to the empty church office, which is technically off limits, but at this hour no one is around to stop him from pushing open the unlocked door. He uses the phone to call Ronan. While the line rings one, two, three times, Adam slides down to sit on the carpet with his back pressed up against the desk, head tipped back, eyes darting from one strangely shaped shadow to the next.

He is still, and probably always will be, habitually uncertain in the dark.

“Parrish?”

Ronan sounds hoarse and rough with sleep when he finally picks up the call.

But he _picked up the call_.

“How did you know it was me?” Adam whispers. He feels like he has to whisper just then, crouched on the floor in his faded sleep shirt with the phone pressed to his ear, his fingers stiff in the cold. 

His pulse stutters when Ronan bares his teeth. 

At least, Adam _thinks_ he does. He can practically see it even through the phone line.

“Where are you?” he adds hopefully. “Monmouth?”

“Yeah.”

The answer makes his heart leap with relief. 

Adam feels the rough scratch of the carpet against his palm.

“I could drive over…” he starts.

Ronan cuts him off. “What about Gansey.” Not a question. Not really.

Adam hears the soft rustle of a blanket that he takes to mean Ronan is climbing out of bed, the soft thump as he pulls his boots on, both actions a wordless answer to his own wordless question. It makes the blood in his veins hum excitedly. Then the line goes dead. Adam hangs up his phone, not really that disappointed, and tiptoes over to the side door. He slides back the latch, wincing when the _click_ echoes in the quiet space around him, too loud.

No one is there, but being quiet is another habit Adam is still trying to unlearn.

Henrietta at night smells like dead leaves and rain.

He sinks down to sit on the front steps of the church, the broken concrete cold through his faded sweat pants, and tucks his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. Mist curls in his hair. Adam squeezes his eyes shut, the harsh glare of the street lamps burning right through his lids until the low growl of an engine joins in with the cricket song. 

Ronan jerks the BMW to a stop in the parking lot and hurls himself out of the driver seat, slamming the door shut behind him furiously. Adam knows the action is all habit. He stands up, and then Ronan is there, arms wrapped tightly around his waist, face tucked in the hollow of his throat where Adam likes it the most.

“Were you dreaming?” he asks, feeling a little guilty.

“No way.”

“But you were asleep.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Ronan drags his mouth down a few more inches, teeth scraping over sensitive skin. Adam tries to remember how to breath. He clutches at the back of Ronan’s head with one hand, shaved hair bristling against his fingertips.

“Come upstairs?” he mutters. 

“The BMW is closer.”

“Ronan. Come upstairs.”

They meet again in the dark, in his tiny apartment, on the shitty single mattress. Ronan kisses the feeling back into his skin, and Adam moans quietly, shivering in just his boxer shorts.

“Fucking window,” Ronan grunts. It is stuck slightly open, letting the cold in.

Adam tucks his bare feet under the blanket. “Stay with me,” he murmurs, trying not to sound nervous.

“The fuck did you think I was going?”

“Why are you always such an asshole?” Adam says.

Ronan grins, teeth bared. Exactly like Adam had pictured on the phone earlier.

“You can dream,” he adds, tugging the blanket over both of them. The lumpy bed only just barely fits two gangly teenaged boys, even when they are squeezed in very close together, arms and legs tangled up, breathes tangled up, their heart beats synching.

Ronan leans down and kisses the tip of his cold nose. “Go the fuck to sleep.”

“You go to sleep.”

“No. You.”

“Asshole.” Adam lips betray him by twitching in the wrong direction. 

Ronan is kind enough not to mention it, just closes his eyes. Adam carefully unbuckles his battered watch and leaves it on the floor next to the mattress. The minute hand ticks in time to his breathing as he falls asleep.

**II**

“Here. Stop here.” Adam braces his hand on the dashboard as Ronan pulls up short on the side of a dusty Henrietta road. There are no street lamps this far out, and no city lights either. They are well and truly in the middle of nowhere, stopped on a shitty gravel stretch with dust swirling lazily around the BMW.

Ronan reaches over to shut off the stereo, but leaves the engine running. Adam watches the muscles flex in his wrist, pale skin stretched taught.

“Is this creeping you out?” he says.

“Do look creeped out to you?” Ronan bites back.

The honest answer is _yes_. 

His eyes are a little wider than usual in his pale face, and his hand is shaking.

Adam touches the back of his wrist, where the leather bands are looped around it.

“Come with me?”

“The fuck else am I going to do? Just sit here in the car and wait for you break your ankle falling in a fucking gopher hole? Did you even remember to bring a flash light with you?”

Adam did not remember.

Ronan tosses over his phone, but the battery is almost dead.

“I guess we have to make this quick,” Adam says.

He gets out of the car. Ronan does the same, stomping around to join Adam in the thick grass on the side of the ditch. The dew is already soaking through his sneakers and the cuffs of his jeans, and as Adam stands there he can feel rain misting lightly across his cheeks.

He shivers just a little.

Ronan catches him at it, and scowls before shrugging out of his leather jacket, shoving it forcefully at Adam. 

“How are you so fucking unprepared?”

“Ronan.”

“Take it.”

“Lynch.”

“Just fucking put it on.”

Adam puts the jacket on as his face heats up. It smells like leather and Ronan.

He zips it up right under his chin and then starts walking, shining the pale beam of light from the phone in front of him to illuminate any potential gopher holes. All he can hear is his own quick breathing, and the soft crunch of the dead grass flattening under his sneakers. And Ronan, of course. Adam is trying so hard to attune himself to the frequency of the ley line, a more difficult task since Cabeswater was sacrificed to save Gansey, but somehow Ronan is always there instead, his own particular and peculiar energy skirting just around the edges of Adam’s consciousness even when he knows that the other boy is fine, safe, alive.

He can feel Ronan watching him too, goose bumps pricking up along the back of his neck when he thinks about it, but not in a bad way.

When he stumbles over a loose clump of dirt that the flash light skipped carelessly over, Ronan is there to catch him with a hand on his arm. His fingers burn hot through the leather jacket, and Adam burns too.

“Are your fucking spider senses tingling yet, or are we going to spend all night wandering around in the dark?” Ronan snarls.

Adam shrugs. Slides his hand up until their palms brush together. He feels better like that, anchored firmly to Ronan. Ronan seems to feel better too, even though his eyes are still hard. His hand is solid and real and _there_.

“What are we even looking for?” he adds, a bit less angrily.

“Not sure.” Adam hesitates. “I think it has something to do with water.”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “Really fucking specific.” But he lets himself be pulled along by Adam with only minimal swearing for another seven and a half minutes, until their sneakers splash through a narrow stream.

The water is warm. Unnaturally so.

Adam crouches in the water and presses his free hand down, feeling mud and grass and gravel press back, oozing between his fingers. Ronan seems to realize that this is it, or that this is _something_ , at least, because he releases Adam so he can use both hands. A gentle current skips along underneath the surface of the water.

Adam startles when a worm wriggles away from his left palm, a yelp escaping before he can swallow it. 

“What?” Ronan snaps, clearly on edge. Adam knows that he is both awed and intimidated by this thing Adam becomes when he is working for the Ley Line, and he also knows that he needs to sooth Ronan, because the tense energy is throwing him off.

He bumps their elbows together, gently, seeking to reassure.

Ronan deflates again, the fire in his sharp eyes dimming, if never quite extinguished.

But he leans down to help when Adam starts digging beneath the stream, both of them shifting through the earth together until Adam feels a zing of rightness. He grabs the thing, hard and smooth and cool, and pulls. When it becomes clear that whatever it is will require more man power, Ronan joins him again, and they pant side by side as one end of the pipe finally comes in to view above the water.

It pops loose unexpectedly, and Adam slips in the mud.

Ronan catches him again, steadying him for the second time that night, for what must be the hundredth time in the last few impossible months. Then he tosses the pipe away, turning back to Adam as it lands with a hollow thunk in the grass several yards away.

“If you got mud on my jacket…”

Adam reaches up, and smears grimy fingers across his right cheek. Ronan swears loudly, almost joyfully, and he grabs Adam by the arm. They scuffle in the stream, their shoes and jeans soaked with mud and water, their laughter muffled by kisses that start playful and turn hungry even though this is the absolute worst place for it.

Adam clutches at Ronan.

Ronan clutches at Adam.

They are both shivering now.

“Parrish. Can we go back to the fucking car yet?”

**III**

Adam noses his car up next to the BMW in the front driveway and kills the engine. The Barns looks even more like a dream through the cracked windshield tonight, framed in perfect darkness, with snow scattered across the fields and even more clinging to the branches of a nearby plum tree that is still somehow dripping with fruit.

Ronan left the porch light on. For him.

He can already smell the fire burning in the wood stove as he climbs out of the car, a feature that is entirely useless since the farm house has central heating, probably dreamed up to never fail even if the power goes out.

He takes a detour to the woodshed anyway, stacking a few extra logs in his arms before heading up to the house. He fumbles with the door one handed, manages to nudge it open, and then stumbles inside rather less gracefully than he had hoped.

Opal flies down the hall to greet him like a strange dog, shrieking her excitement.

Chainsaw is close behind her, swooping down to land right on Adam’s head.

Which is how Ronan finds him a moment later.

“Parrish. What the fuck are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Adam mutters. He drops the logs with a crash.

Ronan roars with laughter, amused for no obvious reason, and then shoos Chainsaw away before kissing Adam too quickly. He could definitely have used a longer welcome home, but Adam busies himself with pulling off his damp sneakers while Ronan turns to gather up the discarded kindling.

“You want something to eat?”

Adam does.

He always does.

The best part about this thing he has with Ronan is probably the fact that he can feel a little less guilty about eating his food after a long day working and studying. Opal and Chainsaw both chatter happily to Adam while he stuffs his face with cold hot dogs smeared in barbeque sauce and mustard, and all around him the house smells like heat and flames and smoke as Ronan builds up the fire in the woodstove.

“Shower?” he says, reappearing just as Adam is rinsing his plate.

“Are you coming with?” Adam counters.

Ronan grins.

They strip naked and kiss again, more fervently this time, in the bathroom upstairs while the hot shower fills the air around them with steam. Adam lets Ronan map his chest with fingers and teeth, bracing himself with one hand on the edge of the sink, his knees feeling delightfully weak.

Sometimes he worries that Ronan will get tired of this: his endless neediness, his desperate kisses and nervous hands. But then he remembers Ronan has wanted him for so much longer, that Ronan never does anything halfway, and surely that counts for something.

“Adam.”

Ronan hums the name against his skin, a prayer. Worshipful.

It _definitely_ counts for something.

Adam feels his toes curl.

The rest of the night stretches out in front of him, long and lazy. They will jerk each other off in the shower, messy, dizzy with need, and then Ronan will kiss his neck in that place where Adam likes his mouth the most, and the water will still be hot because it was dreamed that way. Ronan will let him borrow a pair of clean boxers and soft gray sweat pants, maybe a tee shirt, probably not a tee shirt, before they curl up in front of the woodstove with Opal and Chainsaw. They will talk, about everything and nothing, until Opal falls asleep dangerously close to the fire, and Ronan will complain loudly but fondly as he carries her up the stairs to the room that used to belong to Declan. Adam will sleep with Ronan, in his room, with the glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling, because that is always where he sleeps now when he stays over at The Barns.

Ronan will kiss him one more time before he falls asleep.

The next morning and his blissfully late shift with at the factory are still hours away.

This is not a dream.

Adam scrapes his hand back over short bristled hair, and lets himself want.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Kudos and comments give me life!! I still have a few unfinished fics that I would really like to post before CDTH comes out in November... but we shall see if I have the time to get them done as I am an accomplished procrastinator :D
> 
> Also! I read the CDTH sampler and MAY have some IDEAS for a missing scene or two... if anyone is interested?? Let me know in the comments! 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr: @alliwannadoiswrite


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